Surrender.

The last few weeks brought me some valuable lessons along what I consider to be my spiritual journey on the island, and they have been far from pleasant... And because it is OK not to be OK when you are going through hard times, after my 'Love letter to life' I am dedicating this piece to speak up about mental health. A term that in my opinion is treated by many to be as taboo to openly speak about as it is sex and yet, all aspects that determine our quality of life root from our mental state. So in this twisted world of oversharing our happy moments (which sometimes are only seemingly happy), opinion, outrage and disappointment on social media (and even if you are not one to share much of it, you are inevitably hit by what you find on your newsfeed scrolling down), let's make some space for what truly matters, and that is YOU...and I really mean the core of you!

Talking from my personal experience, here is what I know. When you are in control of your mental health and not your mental health in control of you, you have more physical energy, you get out of bed ready to take on the world. You feel inspired and motivated. You face and overcome challenges with more ease and clarity, you tackle anything coming your way with a 'how can this be solved?' attitude (the glass is half full) instead of a 'how can this NOT be solved?' attitude (the glass is half empty). Your focus is sharper, and you focus on the right things. Your temper is calmer and you react to stress in a more composed manner. Your work performance is better, you find yourself naturally more productive and proactive. Your relationships are more stable and meaningful, and you nurture them. You are able to express love and care for others in a deeper way because you consciously exercise self-love and self-care (remember, you can't pour from an empty glass). You smile and make other people smile. You are radiant, with positive vibes that shine from the inside. You find beauty in the little things. You feel grateful. You sleep better. You eat better. Your thoughts compose a gentle but empowering melody in your head instead of constant and intimidating noise. You are in your happy place (at least, this is how I would describe my happy place, a state of euphoria in which I am in complete control over my thoughts, feelings and emotions).

Now, let's see (again, talking from my personal experience), what those factors are that influence our mental state regardless how much credit we give to them: private life, family life, social life, work life (so far, the list is quite obvious, right?!) and the physical factors of our surroundings (adding this to my list was a game changer as I have only just acknowledged the power of it!). Well, the last few weeks made me feel like I have been trading on very thin ice in many of those areas. Most people aim to eliminate risk factors in their lives (the ice is less likely to break in your comfort zone), but I have always been an 'all-in' kind of girl, trusting that everything coming my way is there with a purpose to make me grow, learn and develop a deeper understanding of the world and of myself. And that process of growth can get very painful and turbulent, resulting in times when both the inside and outside world feel like a battlefield making you feel extremely fragile and vulnerable. You feel completely out of touch with yourself and you start experiencing the opposite effect of all the above listed signs of being in your happy place. First, your mental health (just like your physical body would) is sending you signals that it feels weak- at this stage, the emotional suffering is occasional and if you can find the root in one of the 5 influencing factors and solve the cause, you can bring it back to balance without major outbreaks. If you decide not to or don't know how to act on those signals, the process moves into the next stage with alarms of it falling ill. At this stage, the emotional suffering becomes more than just having a bad day and the feeling of discomfort becomes stronger and stronger. And when you try to suppress those negative emotions instead of working through and liberating them, they start accumulating and eventually take over your mental health- at this stage, the mind has already fallen ill. Before you know it, you find yourself in a big, dark and scary hole that feels extremely lonely. And whether you like to admit it or not, we have all been there at some points in our lives, the only question is how quickly we manage to bounce back...

It's been a tough winter. Private life: Challenging. I found love (or rather love found me) bringing alongside those butterflies, certain factors into my life that I have no control over and yet, they indirectly have a huge influence on me. Family life: Distant. The first time in years I couldn't spend Christmas with my family (a special year when all my extended family living abroad got together to spend the holidays back home) and as much as I have learnt to accept missing out on important family gatherings over the years, my heart was truly bleeding this time. Social life: Absent. My phone didn't stop ringing on New Year's Eve with people close to my heart checking in on me, which made me feel very grateful for my wonderful friends -my chosen family away from my family- with whom strings don't seem to have loosened despite the distance, but being reminded of the buzzing social circle and support system I had left behind with my move to the island also brought a sinking feeling (being a social person with a nearly non-existent social life here is a difficult one to process...). Work life: My sunshine. It proved to be my shelter, soul-retreat and source for endorphins getting me through this winter (even if my babies may make me crippled in my wrists and shoulders eventually :D). Physical factors: Rough AF. Lack of daylight, storms with crazy winds, icy roads (on which you can barely stand on your two feet, making it quite challenging if you have to walk to the bus or to get your grocery shopping done like I do). So this is what my 5 influencing factors looked like over the past few months in a nut shell, resulting in:

One panic attack (and I really mean a literal one, and I am not one to get those often!) caused by the strong wind pushing me in front of a car when I couldn't hold my balance in the storm on my way home from grocery shopping (the most out-of-control experience I have ever had!). Restless nights filled with vivid nightmares (my dreams have always been vivid but I never went through a period of this many troubling dreams!). Cooking for survival rather than with a passion, with not much appetite (being as foodie as I am, big warning sign!). Zero kms run (with a marathon coming up in 4 months, even bigger warning sign!). Weeks when even with 9-10 hours of sleep I could hardly get myself out of bed (I had never been one to fall into the 'polar bear' syndrome wanting to sleep through winter before!). And when I wasn't running around war zones in dreamland, that constant noise in my awake head seemed to have returned (the same noise that after years finally stopped when I arrived to this peaceful place in August)...

Doesn't sound like my happy place, right?! So I did what any sun-loving vegan living on the island would do in their right mind, I went to get my blood tested being convinced I must have some kind of vitamin deficiency making me feel this way. And surprise, surprise, the doctor told me my blood results couldn't be better, and being a vegan here that really is something! Then he added, this being my first winter here, it is only natural that psychologically I am having a hard time and told me to hang in there because better days are coming... Knowing that my symptoms weren't rooting from a physical cause, I knew I had to look inward and analyse what was really going on at my core. I am somewhat familiar with this analysis process from last January when the findings of it were very obvious: I was in a dysfunctional relationship and in a job that was killing my soul so it was 'easy' to know how to change those factors. But this time, well, this time the lesson seemed to be very different: surrender...

The main teaching of mindfulness is to accept what is, and as the saying goes: 'When you can't control what's happening, challenge yourself to control how you respond to it. That is where your power lies.' Am I in a challenging relationship? Yes, but I love my man enough not to run away just because things are not straight-forward, good things never come easy! Do I feel further from my family than ever before? Yes, but they are still just one phone call and plane ticket away! Does my social life look very different to the one I left behind? Yes, but as small as my circle is here, it is full of wonderful people loving, supporting and caring for me! Am I among the few lucky people who do what they love and love what they do for a living? Yes, I found magic! And last but very much not least, is winter tough on the island? Yes it very much is, but if I survived this winter, there really is nothing I can't survive because as my Mum always says, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger!

So my message for today is: It is OK not to be OK, speak up when you feel down so people that love and care for you can help you through the winters of life, don't suffer in silence (even if it is just a bad day)! But remember, no one can do the analysis of where you stand in the matrix of those influencing factors for you! Check in with yourself regularly, pay close attention to your thoughts, feelings and emotions to keep your mental health in balance. And if you find certain areas of your life out of balance, change for the better what you have control over and accept what you don't, either way the choice is always yours. So instead of trying to fight the forces, learn to play with the wind and create your own sunshine even on days when the sun doesn't seem to come up! Last week I had to say goodbye to a dear friend who grew close to my heart and his last words of wisdom to me were before exiting the island for good: 'Adel, always remember that you are at the core of your own universe!'. And so are YOU of yours! 

Happy Tuesday 🦋 x